The subject matter described and/or illustrated herein relates generally to systems, methods, and computer readable media for mining and analyzing data from a social network and, more particularly, identifying influential users in the social network or and/or related topics of the social network.
Online social networks provide a platform for a number of users of the social network to interact with other users through electronic communication. Examples of such social networks include Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, LinkedIn, Google+, and Orkut. Social networks may enable users to create personal profiles that can be accessed by other users. Social networks may also allow users to send and receive messages to share ideas, activities, events, pictures, and interests with other users of the social network. For example, Twitter allows users to send and receive messages called “tweets.” The messages typically include text, but pictures may also be sent. Users send and receive messages that are related to various topics such as current events, sports, movies, natural disasters, political protests, celebrities, technology, and personal interests. Users of the social networks also may search for messages from other users that are related to a particular topic. For example, if a user was interested in monitoring messages about a recent national disaster or a favorite musical group, the user could search for messages having the desired topic on the social network.
In some social networks, users may be “followers” of other users. More specifically, user A may follow user B in that user A is subscribed to receive messages that are posted by user B, but not necessarily sent only to user A or directed to user A. In such cases, user B may be characterized as having influence over user A (and other users that follow user B) because user A has agreed to receive messages from user B. Generally, the more followers that a user has on a social network, the more influence the user is perceived to have in the social network. For a user who is only followed by close family and friends, or a relatively small number of other users, his or her influence may be limited. Other users may have a greater influence, such as celebrities, musical groups, and political nominees, due to their larger number of followers.
Given the popularity of social networks and the vast amounts of information that is communicated each day in the social networks, various academic studies have been performed to study the interaction between users of a social network. For example, researchers have sought to develop metrics for identifying those users who have more influence (hereinafter referred to as “influential users”). But, academic researchers are not the only ones interested in the dynamics of social networks. For instance, businesses also may wish to identify influential users. Businesses could hire the influential users of the social network to write a positive message about the business or a positive review of a product or service that the business manufactures or provides. In particular, businesses may wish to identify users who are influential with respect to a specific topic. For example, a user of the social network who posts messages about cancer research may not be considered influential to the general public, but may have influence with those in the area of cancer research who read the messages from the user.
Another capability that is desired by academics and businesses is the ability to effectively identify related topics on a social network. Knowing the topics that are related to each other, businesses could use this information to provide better services to customers or market more effectively to potential customers. For example, if a store learns that users of the social network are interested in school supplies and a particular television show, then the store may wish to advertise a back-to-school sale during commercials of that television show.
Accordingly, a need exists to identify influential users of a social network, including topic-specific influential users, and/or related topics of the social network.